Posts Tagged ‘friendship’

This is a story where I’ll focus on my only true friend, Hayley, who has OCPD, by the way. I had been mentioning her in a certain number of my posts, and I probably will continue, as she is one of the rare important people in my life for four years now.
Here, I will be writing about our friendship, and what’s it based on, but also, how I learned that I need to make selection about which people I can freely toy with, and which actually deserve at least that much from me to spare them. I’ve learned this when I tried to make her ex boyfriend hate her. What I didn’t have in mind then, was that he too has a personality disorder.

Now, that may not seem like something that’d affect sociopaths plots much, but it actually makes a crucial differences in the outcomes.
Sociopaths can read people very well, and also wear their masks in order to prevent others read them.
That means they can also recognise others’ personality disorders and decide if they can use it in their advantage. I’ll give an example.
For instance, a person with anxiety disorder or histrionic disorder are a perfect target as they are insecure and easy to influence.
On the other hand, bipolars or schizophrenics are people sociopath will avoid due to them being too unpredictive.

In my case, Hayley’s boyfriend (I’ll call him Josh) is a highly-functional autist. What I didn’t know was that people with this sort of autism also have masks and are good at reading people much like sociopaths. One more trait these two have in common is the lack of empathy. So, this is one more disorder that socio would avoid at any cost. The problem though, is that they’re not easy to spot.

To the main story now.

Hayley and I met Josh at the same time, but, as he developed a crush at Hayley that instant she had retreated, and I got to know him a bit. It was very superficial though, so I couldn’t know about his autism. Besides, I had no interest in manipulating him anyhow.
It took almost a year for Hayley to like him back. But they did get together.

She never fully enjoyed that relationship though, felt under pressure and they broke up 8 months later.

That’s when I saw a chance for a game.
Our friend was throwing a party and it happened that Josh had come and Hayley hadn’t because of him as they had a fight after break-up.
He was already angry, but due to his strong emotions, he was not able to truly hate her. It was more of a grudge for unreturned love.
He was depressed and talked to me about it, as I was the closest person to hin on that party. That’s when I decided I can make his anger grow into fury and, eventually, hate.
(I hadn’t had anything against any of them, but I was bored at the party, that was the only reason of my attempt.)
It started with him mentioning how she was heartless, and I used the chance to switch the topic on her bad traits. Continuing, I told him most of the bad things she said about his intollerable behavior, exaggarating caferully, so I would still tell her words and she couldn’t deny if he asked, but still enough to fuel his anger.
I knew I succeeded when he ripped the university catalogue he intended to hand her as he thought she’ll come too.
And he did leave the party with an attitude of never speaking to her again.

As I had no frequent contact with Josh in the next few months though, I let it end on that night. And they made up four months later. It hadn’t bothered me, as Hayley does mean a lot to me, and I wasn’t interested in ruining her happiness as that would lead to her feeling bad, and I would get bored of her. Yes, it was my own interest again, but don’t expect too much from a sociopath.

During that course of time I learned some things too. Both Hayley and Josh understand me, she knows how I am, Josh doesn’t define me as a sociopath, but I asked him once to analyse me, and he described an antisocial perfectly. And yet, both of them are very fond of me.
I even apologized for what I did to both, and the reply I got from Josh was fascinating to me. He said that he did not take it personally nor got upset, and that he actually enjoyed it. “It was like a game of chess.” were his words.

All of that hit me up to make some new rules for my games.
I decided I’ll never play with people that accept me how I really am, even though that are just them two at the moment. They never tried changing me, blackmailing me, nor did they leave my side. I got advices from both, but they always note that’s just a personal opinion and that our friendship won’t be affected if I choose to ignore it.

So, all three of us tend to talk about our disorders, make debates and advice what we should change or pay attention to. This makes us stay linked and it allows me to keep a friendship closest to the ones ordinary people have.

So, why would I break that only for the thrill?
After all, there will always be someone unimportant for the game.

I wanted to show how you can be friends with sociopaths too as long as you show understanding for them and don’t try to make them be something they’re not.
Maybe we aren’t empaths, and we can’t give any love in return, but if you gain a sociopath’s affection, you can be sure they won’t ever try stabbing a knife in your back for the lifetime.
We may not have normal emotions, but we’re still simply humans with a personality disorder, not the devil’s spawn.